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Thursday, October 24, 2013

Everyone can probably agree…first dates are tough!We’ve all felt the butterflies, and let’s
face it – dread – anticipating a first date. The good news, though, is if the
date goes well you usually have a pretty good feeling that a second date is
likely.Not so in the business
world!You can meet a prospective client
and have a great conversation, even share some valuable ideas …and never hear
from them again.And it doesn’t mean
that he/she’s just not that into you!In
business relationships, you have to proactively work to get to the second date.

This is the topic of an upcoming article we are contributing
to CCH’s CPA Practice Management Forum (look for it in the December
issue!).Some highlights from the
article:

Being confident and charming when meeting people
at networking events isn’t enough – following up is the key to the “second
date.”Follow-up emails and phone calls
will help you move the sales cycle forward.

Sometimes you don’t get a response even when
you’re proactive about following up – this is the time to mix in some more
passive communications to keep your name in front of the prospect, illustrate
your knowledge and expertise, and show the prospect you’re interested in
building a relationship.

Add value as you communicate with new prospects
– tips, ideas, case studies – this is how you’ll spark their interest and
solicit a response to move to the next step.

Keep the ball in your court by controlling the
next step – schedule the next meeting, reach out with an invitation, even just
ask permission to follow up in a month.This helps ensure more “dates” in the future!

Schedule time for lead nurturing – enter events
in your calendar to follow up with leads and when the reminders pop up, make
the call or send the email.Don’t
dismiss the reminder until your action step is completed – this will keep you
on track and earn you more of those elusive second dates!

Friday, August 9, 2013

Many firms we talk
struggle to determine the best business development approach.Does it make sense to hire full-time sales
people?Can’t we expect our marketing
director to make sales for us?How will
we compensate a full-time sales person?

Here are some ideas to keep in mind when embarking on the process of building a growth culture in your firm:

·Marketing
and Sales are the fundamental building blocks of a growth culture.You need to address both of these functions
in your firm to sustain consistent growth.

oMarketing is defined as positioning your firm –
telling your story to your target market and building your brand equity in the
marketplace;

oSales is defined as getting face-to-face with
clients and prospective clients to ask for their business;

oMarketing without sales leads to expense with
no/low return on investment; but sales without marketing leads to poor results
and wasted time.

·Within the basic building blocks, there are four elements of a growth culture:

·The characteristics
of a successful marketing professional are quite different from those of an
effective sales person. Most of the time, it doesn’t make sense to hire
one person to handle both of these fundamental roles in your firm. You'll be frustrated. They'll be frustrated. Results will suffer. It's a lose-lose-lose situation.

oHave you made strategic marketing decisions and do you have tactical marketing resources to support full-time sales?

·If your answer is no to these questions, your
firm is likely to have a negative experience with full-time
sales people.It’s crucial to establish the growth culture elements before introducing
full-time sales into your firm.

To learn more about these and the other critical elements of your firm's growth culture, contact us at 319.447.6400 today.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Telephone lead generation—calling those prospects with
which you would most like to do business to schedule an introductory meeting—can
be just the tactic to rev up your firm’s ROI on marketing activities. But
getting partners to make the follow up calls, whether following up to a mailing
or following up with e-marketing activities or recruiting to an event for your
firm, can be difficult at best. Even if your firm has a full time business
development professional, savvy marketers understand that those professionals’
time is often better spent face-to-face meeting with interested prospects than
dialing from inside their offices.

Partnering with a firm with the right experience in
telephone lead generation calls can be the perfect solution for those firms who
are looking for a jump start to their growth efforts. Once you’re sold on the
concept, the next step is to find the right outsourcing partner from among the
hundreds of possibilities. Here are seven points to consider as you evaluate
candidates:

1.Make sure the firm has experience with
business-to-business calling for professional service firms. Making phone
calls to C-level executives and business owners requires a different approach than
calling consumers—and a different skill level of caller. Companies that try to
convince you that calling is calling may not make the best representatives of
your firm.

2.Ask how the callers are supervised and
measured. Professional call centers will have systems and staff in place to
make sure that certain performance levels are being met. If the firm can’t give
you a specific answer for performance expectations (number of dials per
hour/day, number of decision makers reached, appointment goals, etc) it could
be an indication that calling is not a core service and that you should look
elsewhere for a calling partner.

3.Be leery of pay-per-lead programs.
While the pay-per-lead model may sound like a good idea on its surface, when
the focus of your call partner is to deliver a bounty of leads you (and your
partners) could wind up wasting your time with a lot of unqualified prospects.
Incentive programs and bonuses for performance are ok, and can be great
motivators—but basing compensation purely on the quantity of leads is asking
for trouble.

4.Likewise, suspect any sort of guarantee of
results. Like most marketing, telephone lead generation is part science,
part art. The science is the process, benchmarks and measurability of the
program. The art is the timing of the calls, the nuances of the prospects’
prior understanding of the topic and your firm’s brand awareness among the
target market. There are so many combinations of factors affecting your results
that a calling firm who guarantees your results is either not knowledgeable
enough about the process or has a way to manipulate results which may not be in
your best interest. Either way, if you hear a company guarantee results, you
may want to direct your attention to other options.

5.Expect deliverables beyond leads. The
best telephone lead generation firms deliver more than just appointments (all
though that is usually the highest priority). In addition, ask how you will
receive list updates, if the callers identify longer term opportunities to be
nurtured and what kind of documentation you receive for each call. Often,
documented conversations with those prospects who were not interested in a
meeting with your firm offer some of the best market intelligence about
competitors, forces affecting the industry, buying cycles, etc. that money can
buy. That information can be a goldmine for your marketing efforts.

6.Work with a partner who has a broader
understanding of marketing practices. First and foremost you must be
confident that the calling firm understands telephone practices and how to
generate interest in your firm. But beyond that, an understanding of how
telephone lead generation fits into your firm’s overall marketing efforts can
help you make good decisions about incorporating the tactic into your plan and
leverage your overall investment in the calling.

7.Demand open and honest communication. Like
any good partnership, open and honest communication is imperative to the
success of the relationship. The best calling firms have a plan for constant
communication—before, during and after the active dialing. You should know
exactly what kind of results you’re getting, understand any challenges early in
the process, and have the opportunity to work with the callers to make changes
if needed to improve results. If things aren’t going the way you’d planned, the
calling firm should be straightforward about why and proactively offer ideas
for how to deal with the results—up to and including stopping calls if needed.

Keep these seven tips in mind as you seek partners for
your calling endeavor, and you’ll likely find the right fit for your firm and
build a relationship to deliver positive ROI for years to come. Remember that
not every effort will be a home run—or will deliver the same kind of benefit for
your firm. The more you work together with a calling partner, the more you’ll
learn, the smoother the process will become and the better your overall results
will be over time.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

New Year. New Goals. How will you find growth this year?
There are lots of new tools out there to help you market your firm and grow
your top line, but sometimes the best new tools are the old tools implemented
in a different or better way.

Grow Your Client Relationships

Chances are you’ll be spending more time with clients this
year. You have to pay attention to client service and retention if you want to
grow successfully. And even if you don’t have annual work scheduled with
clients, it’s a good time of year to check in with them.Keeping just three things in mind during
these client interactions will help you cement valuable relationships, identify
ideas for cross-selling, and generate leads for new business.Challenge yourself to implement three
valuable activities every time you are going to see a client this year:

Have a client
satisfaction conversation

Ask clients a few high gain questions to identify business needs

Take advantage of positive feedback by asking
for a referral or testimonials

Grow Your Client Base
with New Business Leads

Direct marketing – communicating to your target market via
snail mail or email and following up via phone– has long been one of the most
effective ways to generate leads for new clients.But as your competition gets more active and
prospects are busier, it gets tougher and tougher to see strong results from
direct marketing campaigns. The best way
to do that is to talk to the right targets about something highly relevant and
timely, and offer to help in a way others can’t by positioning yourself as a
specialist vs. a generalist.

Hint: Smaller, more
focused/targeted campaigns tend to produce higher results, fit better within
tight marketing budgets, and produce a more positive return on your
investment.Follow these three rules for
success:

Right Targets:Who are your best clients?To whom do you have the best story to
tell?What size companies, where are
they located, in what specific industry?There is nothing wrong with implementing a campaign to 50 – or even
fewer – companies, if that’s truly the right audience for your messages.

Right Topic:What is happening RIGHT NOW in your
targets’ world?Urgency adds relevancy
to any topic, so think about recent and upcoming events in your marketplace to
determine the best topic for your campaign.

Right Message:What sets you apart from your
competitors?Not only does your message
need to be relevant and timely, but you need to differentiate yourself from all
the other offers your prospects receive to get their attention and earn the
right to meet with them.

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Just like a real whetstone, our services are simple, yet indispensable tools that "sharpen" your competitive edge and help you succeed. The Whetstone group is a professional marketing organization for B2B industries. We provide growth tools that lead to a competitive edge for CPA Firms, Architecture Firms, Law Firms and other B2B industries. Ask about our Growth Academy!